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A MEMORIAL ADDRESS 



UEWVEKED BY 



HON. LEONARD MYERS, 



.TUNE 15th, 1865, 



SlU'-DRK TffK 



NION LEAGUE OF THE THIRTEENTH WARD. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
PUBLISHED BY KING & BAIRD, No. 607 SANSOM STREET. 

1865. 



ABRAHAM LmCOM. 



A MEMORIAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BY 



HOJSr. LEONARD MYERS, 



JUNE 15th, 1865, 



BEFOKE fHE 



UNION LEAGUE OF THE THIRTEENTH WARD. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
PUBLISHED BY KING & BAIRD, No. 607 SANSOM STREET. 

1865. 



ADDRESS. 



Ix tlie beautiful spring time — on two exquisite clan's of 
last month — AYasliington witnessed a siglit to whicli Lis- 
toiy furnishes no parallel. Two great armies — rivals only 
in deeds of unsurpassed heroism against a common foe — 
passed in review before the chiefs of the nation Avhose un- 
ending gratitude they had earned, and the leaders who 
had guided them to victory. 

Heroes of a hundred battles, fierce, long-contested, and 
sanguinary, no holiday attire won for them the deep feel- 
ings which, at times, found vent in tears, at times broke 
forth in wild cheers and applause. But as they swept by 
in serried ranks, with measured and veteran tread, their 
tattered banners, riddled by hostile bullets till the shreds 
alone remained, were mutely eloquent of the deadly fray 
— of privations and destruction and death. Saviours of 
their country, amid the emblems of their success and the 
"wreaths showered on them by a grateful people, they 
proudly trod through the Capital of the nation restored 
by them to Union, prosperity, and peace. 

The warriors of the Potomac were there — of the Seven 
Days' and Fredericksburg, Antietam and Gettysburg, the 
Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Petersburg — the conque- 
rors of Eichmond! Nor they alone; the Armies of 
the Tennessee and Georgia followed, the bronzed moAvers 
of the South, whose advance, world-renowned, fighting 
and marcliino;, from Atlanta to Savannah, from Savannah 
to the sea, had led them across the plains and citadels of 
treason, through its very stronghold, back again to the 
metropolis of the Union. 

Alas ! no ; all were not there : for, beyond the living 
armies whom chance or locality deprived of the glory of 
being present, the thinned ranks, the shattered flags, the 



occasion itself, told too plainly that almost countless tlion- 
sancls of them were sleeping the sleep which knows no 
wakino- marshalled now amono- %\\q hosts of the Eternal. 

They rest in the marshes, by the forests and streams of 
Virginia; the air of free Pennsylvania and of freed Mary- 
land breathes gently above their graves. Struck down in 
sight of three great States, Lookout Mountain stands an 
eternal monument to their memories. Their head-boards 
dot the beautiful valleys of the Shenandoah and the Cum- 
berland ; their blood consecrates the ' ramparts of Forts 
Donelson and Fisher and Nashville and Vicksburg. Shiloh 
and Stone River, Olustee, Murfreesboro', and Chickamauga 
are eloquent of the great dead, and the Mississippi gurgles 
a requiem above thousands of those who fell that this great 
Father of Waters should float in peace to the ocean, a bond 
of strength between the sections of our happy land, hence- 
forth united and free forever. 

Would to God this were all ! Let the massacred of Fort 
Pillow and Plymouth — let the murdered of Libby and 
Belle Isle and Andersonville tell the rest. 

And as the pageant tramped past, filled with these memo- 
ries of the dead, the glance quickly turned to the main 
stand, whence all these living were reviewed — turned rest- 
lessly, hoping, as it were, against hope — picturing one tall 
form, a beaming eye, a radiant smile, which it seemed 
should have been there. Ah! the embattled dead Avere 
not the only absent ; for he, the civic hero of this strife for 
liberty, this triumph of the right, Abraham Lincoln, twice 
chosen ruler of a free people, had fallen by the bullet of 
the assassin, a martyr like them in the cause of Freedom, 
his place here vacant like theirs, but gathered with them 
in a greater review, where praise is perfect and reward 
everlasting. 

Great occasions call forth the qualities of true greatness. 
Genius frequently culls opportunities for itself, but adver- 
sity is the crucible which tries men, and when the storm 
comes and the waves run high and the passengers begin to 



despair, the quiet faitb, and bravery, and skill of him who 
guides the vessel through in safety, marks him distin- 
guished among his fellow-men. 

Such an one was Abraham Lincoln. His life covering 
nearly all of the present century, he stands in moral gran- 
deur the foremost man of his time. 

The past four years have been years of sad realities, of 
almost incredible romance, too. The stride of a century 
was not expected to do so much. More history has been 
crowded into them than will be told in tenfold their time. 

Four years ago American slavery falsified the Declara- 
tion of American Liberty ; to-day that slavery is dead and 
waits but the forms of burial. Four years ago the art of 
war, known to us in earlier struggles, seemed to have been 
forgotten ; now, the most warlike people of the earth, we 
again relapse into the pursuits of peace, secured to us by 
the ordeal of battle. 

Four 3^ears ago, civil strife, the crudest test of a nation, 
long predicted, long warded off, had not yet fairly burst 
upon our hitherto fortunate land ; but it came in all its 
fury, and with the world as spectators, some confiding, but 
more predicting disaster and political destruction, we have 
passed through the fiery furnace, not unscathed it may be, 
yet purified and regenerate. Republican institutions have 
stood the trial. The sovereignty of the people — the right 
of the majority to rule, asserted in the beginning, has been 
vindicated to the end, even through rivers of blood. The 
Flag was the shibboleth, but on its starry folds, in storm 
and sunshine, still floated "the Union" — "the People!" 

And all along this terrible struggle every eye was bent, 
every thought turned to him who was at the helm — now in 
doubt or despondency, now in hope and confidence. 

Remembering that a soft answer turneth away wrath, the 
cavil and the sneer fell harmless at his feet. With thanks 
for those who approved, he kept steadily onward. True as 
the needle to the pole, he only sought the salvation of his 
country, never forgetting the priceless legacy committed to 



6 

his keeping, never doubting tbe justice of Lis cause or its 
final triumph, never taking a step backwards. And so he 
won the goal amid the hosannas of his countrymen. 

Permitted, as it were, from tbe top of Pisgahi, to see the 
promised land, although, not destined to enjoy the peace he 
had aided to gain, he lived long enough to understand the 
full fruition which awaited the people he loved. It seemed 
that his mission was accomplished — a life complete, rounded 
to a perfect close. Thus, in the language of his last beau- 
tiful inaugural, "with malice towards none, with charity for 
all," while tempering justice with mercy, he fell beneath the 
blow sped by the accursed spirit of slavery, which, in its 
death throes, was to have one last great victim, that it might 
be marked out for the hatred of mankind forever. 

"Who was this victim of a cruel conspiracy; this ruler, 
faithful to his trust ; this patriot, loved by a nation ? 

It has become fashionable to say that Abraham Lincoln 
Avas elevated from comparative obscurity to fill the Presi- 
dential chair. Such, however, is not the fact. In our im- 
mense expanse of territory — single States larger than some 
of the chiefest powers of Europe — it were no wonder, in- 
deed, if the rarest qualities had made no ripple beyond the 
city or State which they graced. In the great West the 
wand of the enchanter could scarcely have been more 
potent than the pioneer's axe, and the spirit of progress 
which has wielded it. Towns are teeming where but a few 
years since were only forests. Civilization has no more 
beautiful abode. There Literature and Art drink inspira- 
tion from the fountain of nature, and the statesman, pausing 
only to glance at the past, seems privileged in dwelling on 
the borders of a prosperous future. Bright names are there 
which have scarcely reached us, and we of the East have as 
many unknown to them. Mr. Lincoln's fame, however, had 
become National before the Chicago Convention placed him 
in nomination. Still better, that fame sprang from his own 
home, widening gradually, and deepening as it went. 

It is true he was a poor boy, without adventitious aid, 



without collegiate teacliings, when the West was jet a 
wilderness ; but it is also true that he had long before over- 
come those " twin jailers of the daring heart — low birth and 
iron fortune." The spoiled children of wealth may fill the 
chief places in other countries ; but if you will search the 
records of achievement in this, those carved highest on the 
rock will often be found to have reached the elevation by 
just such struggles as his. 

Mr. Lincoln was always a leader. No matter what his 
undertaking, from the very first he had the public con- 
fidence. It is not a little singular that he who died the 
civil commander-in-chief of the armies and navies of the 
Eepublic, having guided their policy through a perilous 
war, should have commenced his career an enlisted soldier 
in the Black Hawk war, even then chosen captain. 

At the age of twenty-five elected to the Legislature of 
Illinois, he was returned four successive terms, in all eight 
years; was six times a Presidential elector; in 1846, was 
brought into the broader arena of national politics by an 
election to Congress — the only Whig member from his State 
— and took a prominent part in the discussions of that body. 
Withdrawing his name as a candidate for United States 
Senator in 1854 — declining a nomination for Governor 
when success was certain — receiving one hundred and two 
votes for Vice-President in the Philadelphia Convention 
which nominated John C. Fremont, his name was destined 
to a wider nationality through his remarkable debates with 
Stephen A. Douglas, when, in 1858, as candidates for the 
United States Senate, it was agreed that a Legislature 
should be chosen pledged to one or other of them. The 
popular vote was with Lincoln; a small majority of the 
districts, however, chose Douglas Eepresentatives. Yet 
this great canvass, in which the people of a State hung 
upon his clear reasonings, his eloquent advocacy of the 
right, his powerful analysis, his admirable illustrations, 
made Mr. Lincoln's defeat a veritable success. The selec- 
tion of the National Convention, he became the choice of 



the people — his own great speech at the Cooper Institute 
being the key-note of the campaign. Since then Abraham 
Lincoln has passed into history, and the pen of the histo- 
rian can trace no more eventful period of any age or clime 
than that of his Presidency. 

Let it not, then, be said that any body of men withdrew 
him from obscurity to confer their honors on him. By his 
own untiring energy; by his sagacity and knowledge of 
human nature; by his professional acquirements; above 
all, by his purity of purpose and the high promise of his 
manhood, he had lifted himself gradually upward, and 
they found him near the topmost rung of the ladder. He 
came up to the Jeff'ersonian standard— honest and capable. 

No man before had so won the love of his fellow-beings; 
no death had ever so stricken a nation. Civilization still 
stands aghast at the foul wrong, "the deep damnation of 
his taking off';" and two continents mourn above his grave. 

I remember well on his first nomination, a friend wrote 
me fi'om Illinois, "Mr. Lincoln is more beloved than any 
man in this State." What was then a river became the 
ocean. The instincts of the popular heart rarel}^ err. Men 
knew him as "Honest Abe." Strai<'htibrward, candid, 
always truthful, he was widely sought as an advocate, for 
juries were in the habit of believing him; and so when the 
arena grew wider, the people were his jury. He com- 
muned with them, and generally won the verdict. This 
was for no mere effect, but from the very essence of his 
nature. 

The same characteristic marked him to the last. As 
President he had no secrets from the public longer than 
secrecy was demanded. He pleaded with the erring, reasoned 
with the doubting, poured forth his hopes to the trusting; 
an earnest, honest man. If the way was dark, he illumined 
it by homely illustration ; if the path was thorny and the 
rest hung back, by quaint analogy or parrjang query, he 
convinced them it was still the best; and keeping the 
heaviness of his heart to himself when disaster and wrongr 



9 

were uppermost, the side he took seemed ever the brightest 
and proved so in the end. 

How he appealed to the South in the eloquence of his 
first inauguraise^ : — " My countrymen, one and all, think 
calmly and well upon this whole subject * * * the 
Government will not assail you. You can have no con- 
flict without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not 
enemies, but friends. "We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our 
afi'ection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from 
every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they 
will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

How he implored the border slave States, in the cause of 
humanity, still to save themselves by adopting compen- 
sated emancipation while there was time : — 

"To the people of those States I now earnestly appeal — 
I do not argue. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the 
signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged con- 
sideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal 
and partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause 
for a common object, casting no reproaches at any. It acts 
not the Pharisee. The changes it contemplates would come 
gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking any- 
thing. Will you not embrace it ? So much good has not 
been done by one efibrt in all past time as, in the provi- 
dence of God, it is now your high privilege to do. May 
the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected 
it." 

What more withering reply than his interrogatory to the 
Vallandigham committee ? — 

" Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier bo}'- who deserts, 
while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who 
induces him to desert ?" 

What plainer statement of the negro-enlistment question 
than this : — "And now, let any Union man who complains 



10 

of this measure, test himself by ■writing down in one line, 
that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms, and 
in the next that he is for taking 130,000 men from the 
Union side, and placing them where they would be best for 
the measure he condemns. If he cannot face his case so 
stated he cannot face the truth." 

His most querulous friends, his bitterest opponents, were 
still deemed worthy of reply ; and though his condescension 
alarmed the timid, he always stooped to conquer, for his 
pen was trencl^ant and the people at large were his confi- 
dants. The r'eace Conference, so much deprecated, proved 
a master stroke of policy. It gave the last moral blow to 
the Eebel cause. It strengthened the arms of our soldiery, 
and when it was over Mr. Lincoln confided every word of 
it to an anxious country. 

It is not necessary to dwell upon his most beautiful 
attribute. Janvier's touching poem of the " Sleeping Sen- 
tinel " has crystallized one only of his many acts of mercy. 
I never knew him to deny the prayer that a soldier's life 
might be spared. In fact, it was always difficult for him to 
refuse an appeal to his feelings. Many a weary load he 
lifted from many a weary heart — many a stain placed on 
the broAV of some brave boy for a brief desertion did he 
wipe away — many a tear of joy started at his bidding. 
One instance I shall not soon forget. A Southern mother 
had left her babe, hurrying North to her husband, a 
prisoner and dying. She came too late, and in her agony 
turned back towards the only being left her on earth; but 
at "Washington a barrier met her in the shape of a general 
order from the War Department. 

Week after week she had waited, buoyed up by a 
mother's hope. At last the papers said some ladies had 
received passes to go South. I called upon the President, 
and urged a permit in the case mentioned. He listened 
sympathetically, but motioned a refusal, when I ventured 
to speak of what the papers had recorded. " Ah," said 
Mr. Lincoln, " this only shows that I should not have 



11 

violated tlie rule ;'' and he wrote the lines which made one 
more being happy. 

The last order he gave on that sad 14th of April was for 
the discharge of a rebel prisoner upon his taking the oath. 
The request was endorsed by a distinguished member of 
Congress, then Senator, to which Mr. Lincoln added, " Let 
it be done." And then he told him a beautiful story of 
some children who went to an island to gather flowers, and 
how one, in being carried over, had slid gradually into the 
stream, and how he at first had refused theS^requests, but 
his feet had touched the water, and now, when Peace 
seemed so near, and everything looked bright, he could 
refuse no longer, but Avas being borne along in the stream 
too. Even then, when his heart was filled with pardon, the 
coward plot of those for whom it throbbed had culminated, 
and his feet were already laved by the waters of eternity. 

His sense of justice was ever uppermost — -justice to the 
rights of labor ; justice to the whole people ; justice to him 
who was fighting the people's battle; and if he erred, it 
was still on the side of mercy. Early in the war he fore- 
bore to fill vacancies on the Supreme Bench, lest he might 
disable himself "from doing justice to the South on the 
return of peace." In like manner, much as he wished it 
otherwise, there was a long pause before using the war 
power to free the slaves, from a dislike to deprive innocent 
as well as guilty of their alleged possessions. As the 
Eebellion was the fruit of an aristocracy, he kept constantly 
as its antidotal argument the value of popular institutions. 
"Labor," he said, "is prior to and independent of capital. 
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have 
existed if labor had not first existed." He declared the 
war " essentially a people's contest," to maintain that Gov- 
ernment " whose leading object is to elevate the condition 
of men." 

AVhile fully recognizing the great results effected by the 
patriotism of the People, at no time were the nation's de- 
fenders forgotten by him. In his first special message 



12 

decrying the treaclieTj of many officers, lie gloried that 
"no common soldier or common sailor was known to have 
deserted the flag." In no appropriate place did he omit to 
thank- them, and never more appropriately than just one 
year ago at the Fair in this city. For, said Mr. Lincoln 
there, " say what you will, after all the most is due to the 
soldier, who takes his life in his hands and goes to fight the 
battles of his country." In the hospitals his presence was 
among the gentlest — in the camp and at the front his words 
were among the kindliest — mingling with the people, doing 
good everywhere. 

No incumbent of the Presidential chair was ever so 
much seen by, so well known to, the people. From morn- 
ing till night he bent attentive ear to their hopes and fears, 
lightened their cares, redressed their grievances: as though 
the lessening of their burthens lifted the heavy weight of 
cares from his heart too. 

Long years to come, many a fireside, in every corner of 
the land, will be gladdened by the story of his kindnesses. 
Old men will gather attentive listeners about them as, in 
telling the tales of the great Rebellion and its downfall, the 
sacrifices of the masses, the heroism of those who battled 
for the Right, they add how they saw and spoke with the 
good President, picture his winning smile, and mayhap 
hand to their children's children a line from his pen. 

Naturally, visitors from his own West seemed always 
welcome — though it were hard to say who was most wel- 
come; but his vivid descriptive powers, his wonderfully 
illustrative memory, seemed then best brought into play. 
Calling once late in the day, I found a clergyman from 
Illinois, who had waited, fondly hoping for an interview. 
He had voted for Mr. Lincoln twice,, but never saw him, 
and begged an introduction, if but for a moment. I at 
once obtained the privilege, and had no cause to regret it. 
Familiar with every section of the State, he astonished his 
visitor by his minute description of localities and manners, 
^giving even the number of votes cast in many counties of 



13 

his section, and his face lit with enthusiasm as with eloquent 
tongue he described their undulating valleys, their pleasant 
rivers and waving prairies. My new-made acquaintance 
grasped my hand warmly at parting, and said he had food 
for a dozen sermons. 

Such a President could not be aught but a good husband 
and father, and all of this he was — passing from the care 
of the nation only to the happiness of the family circle. 
But above all other traits in the character of Abraham 
Lincoln — trusting still to Providence, invoking the Divine 
aid for himself and his country in everything — was his 
distinguished love of freedom. It may have been instilled 
— it seemed to be inborn. Eecognizing, obeying the laws 
which prevented interference with slavery in the States, he 
never acc[uiesced even (by silence in their justice — always 
opposing its extension. As early as 1837, he' recorded his 
belief on the Journals of the Legislature of Illinois, that 
slavery is "founded on both injustice and bad policy." 

In 1848, he declared in Congress, "I am a Northern man, 
or rather a Western Free State man, with a constituency I 
believe to be, and with personal feelings I ktipw to be, against 
the extension of slavery." His votes are all so recorded. 
In. 1858, with prophetic vision he foretold that the nation 
could not live half slave, half free ; and if not yet the 
Apostle of Liberty, was soon chosen as the Champion 
against Slaivery extension.. 

Only last year he wrote, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing 
is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and 
feel." What followed Mr. Lincoln's election is too fresh in 
the memory to need repetition. 

How slavery struck at the life of the Eepublic — how 
little by little old fears and prejudices died away, — and the 
slave was liberated and the black man allowed to fight — 
how this just ruler, true to his oath, endeavored above all 
to save the Union — how traitors mistook leniency for 
weakness, and having broken the covenant, found at last it 
no longer shielded them — and how, after timely warning, 



14 

he issued the great Proclamation of Emancipation, here- 
after to be more renowned than Magna Charta — striking 
the shackles from millions of human beings — breaking the 
bonds of slavery at a blow. 

It has been urged that Mr. Lincoln was too conservative, 
too slow to act. In his own Avords, willing to adopt new 
views " so fast as they appeared to be true views," he 
claimed to have been controlled by events, not to control 
them ; but having decided once, he was firm as the rock. 

Eead his masterly letter to the Illinois Convention: "The 
Proclamation as law either is valid or is not valid. If it is 
not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it caruiot he 
retracted any more than the dead can he hrongJit to h'fey And 
again, in his message to Congress, he declared that if its 
sacred promise was to be withdrawn, another, and 7iot he, 
must be found to do the deed. 

As the war progressed, some grew faint-hearted ; but he 
never — nor fultered, nor swerved an instant from his great 
object — the preservation of the Union. He often said he 
would rather die than surrender the principle Avhicli lay at 
the foundation of our liberties or the Government entrusted 
to his keeping, preferring, if God willed, to continue the 
contest "till all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two 
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil should be sunk, 
and till everj^ drop drawn with the lash should be paid by 
another drawn with the sword." 

He died in the very fulness of a well-spent life, laid upon 
the altar of his country ; just when a nation's thanks and a 
nation's love seemed to encircle him ; when the sneer had 
died upon the lip, and a world had learned to know the 
greatness of his heart and intellect ; when he had demon- 
strated that among freemen there can be no successful ap- 
peal from tlie ballot to the bullet, and accomplished the 
task which he truly foreshadowed had devolved on none 
other since the days of Washington. 

The world contains no like record. A whole people 
stricken in the midst of the joy of victory and peace to 



15 

the innermost depths of grief, flags suddenly draped, the 
song of triumph hushed. Such sorrow never before trem- 
bled along the electric wire. 

They took him back to his home in the West by the 
route which, but little over 4fe¥«e- years since, he traversed 
amid the shouts of a people ; they laid him in the great 
Hall of Independence he so revered, while from the belfry 
above the solemn dirge floated away into the night ; and 
ever as he was borne onward to his resting place, through 
pageants of unutterable wo, millions came quietly out to 
gaze upon his bier, or catch a glimpse of that dear face, 
and women laid flowers upon his coffin, and strong men 
wept like children. 

Time may mellow the grief, but the gratitude of a nation 
will endure forever. Those who were dear to him must be 
cared for by his countrymen. Above all, let his death 
waken us to a new life, that henceforth treason shall be 
branded — a crime without a name — never in another gene- 
ration to disgrace the land ; and when public virtue, and 
unsullied honor, and high principle need a synonym, let 
us remember 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 045 217 4^ 



